User talk:Finsbry

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September 2017
Hello. Your recent edit to List of female detective/mystery writers appears to have added the name of a non-notable entity to a list that normally includes only notable entries. In general, a person or organization added to a list should have a pre-existing article before being added to most lists. If you wish to create such an article, please first confirm that the subject qualifies for a separate, stand-alone article according to Wikipedia's notability guideline. Thank you. NewEnglandYankee (talk) 21:50, 28 September 2017 (UTC)

Please refrain from making unconstructive edits to Wikipedia, as you did at List of female detective/mystery writers. Your edits appear to constitute vandalism and have been reverted. If you would like to experiment, please use the sandbox. Repeated vandalism can result in the loss of editing privileges. If you want to see these writers acknowledged, you'll need to get articles created for them. List pages aren't exhaustive; they're lists of what's on Wikipedia. NewEnglandYankee (talk) 21:59, 28 September 2017 (UTC)

Follow-up
Hello. First, please accept my apologies. I was entirely in the wrong to use the vandalism template, and I should have known it.

Second, I have no desire to denigrate you, or the authors you're trying to add. I am myself a deep enthusiast of Golden Age mysteries; indeed, one of the authors you added--Kay Cleaver Strahan--recently made it onto my reading radar (quite by coincidence; I spotted her name in a photo exhibit in a museum in Portland, OR).

We do have a guideline here. Its purpose is to prevent lists and list pages from being cluttered up with obscure entities. I recognize that you feel strongly about these writers. At the same time, everyone who adds an entry to a list in good faith feels that its subject is notable and worthy of attention. The "article first, list entry second" rule is a good way to avoid bickering about whether that's true or not. It's also true that this is not a hard-and-fast rule.

So I encourage you to submit articles about these authors. Just adding their names to the list without a backing article means that another editor is quite likely to come along and remove them later based on the customary list selection criteria. If the subjects are individually notable, by Wikipedia's criteria, that won't happen.

Apologetically yours, NewEnglandYankee (talk) 01:27, 29 September 2017 (UTC)